Sex is power is violence is ludicrous in this French import that – finally! – answers the burning question, “What do French women want, besides a big baguette and a creamy croissant?” According to the Brisseau Theory, they want unchained passions and equal sexual footing with the men around them, and, if at all possible, a chance to bring out a firearm and a can of petrol in the third act. And why not? France’s notoriously liberal attitudes on les affaires de coeur are the bedrock of intellectually erotic cinema. Compared with the current, doddering sexual mores stumbling around the beleaguered American mindset (for example, an odd groundswell of uninvited Puritanism has draped the statuary of blind Justice in a robe she never asked for), the French appear downright celebratory. C’est la guerre. That said, this erotically turbocharged examination of gender power struggles in modern-day Paris is a bizarre hybrid of soft-core porn and overwrought symbolism that’s enough to make John Ashcroft’s head explode like a Cronenbergian scanner run amok. We’re first introduced to the doe-eyed Nathalie (Revel) and Sandrine (Seyvecou) in the topless bar where they both work – as attraction and bartender, respectively. It’s not long before the two become friends and move in together, with the more experienced Natalie offering a crash course in the manipulation of the male being to her younger charge. Sandrine takes to this vaguely Neil LaBute-ian construct like a pro, and before long the two abandon the hedonistic pleasures of making out in the Metro for something a tad more stimulating: entering the fray of the Parisian business class. Using their micro-miniskirts to win positions in a seemingly stodgy bank, the pair inexorably mount, straddle, and then climb the corporate ladder, so to speak, until Sandrine finally lands in the bed of the CEO’s willfully corrupt and sexually predatory son Cristophe (Deville), a character so laden with slickly evil portent that several of his previous paramours have – in the sudden absence of his affections – immolated themselves. Brisseau’s film begins as one thing and ends up as a wholly different beast, and just when you expect Secret Things to be a francophile’s In the Company of Women, it morphs into a bizarre, ritualistic, and violent take on sexual omnivorousness that has more than a few echoes of Eyes Wide Shut (indeed, Brisseau has included a lengthy orgy sequence that feels very much like the unrated version of Kubrick’s film). While the points it hammers home with all the subtlety of a Vivid Video girl’s come-on are anything but pointless (the female empowerment message here is somewhat undercut by the film’s denouement, but it’s certainly there nonetheless), the film begins an inexorable slide into outright silliness by the third act, with doom-laden ravens appearing from nowhere and images that are best left metaphorical made literal. To its credit, both the exotic Seyvecou and Revel are fully realized and developed characters who ring true throughout. It’s Brisseau’s penchant for the flamboyantly perverse and the perversely flamboyant, however, that might have been best left secret.
This article appears in April 9 • 2004.